Year
A
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Images
Strong
persons to help carry burdens
Points to
note
There are two separate imageries from this Sunday’s
reading. In the first part of the
reading, Jesus touched upon the fact that the kingdom of heaven is revealed to
mere children. I have chosen for the
discussion, the second part with its well-known line, Come to me, all you who labour and are over burdened, and I will give
you rest.
This reading can be very abstract for the children
and, again, it should be best translated into the more practical terms of
children’s lives with the more vivid imageries for younger children.
Liturgy
Acclamation before the Gospel
Alleluia!
Alleluia!
Blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
for revealing the mysteries of the kingdom to mere
children.
Alleluia!
Gospel
Explain that Jesus is travelling around Galilee with his
disciples and teaching them along the way.
The Lord be with you.
All: And also
with your spirit.
A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St Matthew
All: Glory to you
O Lord
(Mt 11:25-30)
Jesus exclaimed, “I bless you, Father, Lord of
heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever
and revealing them to mere children.
Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do. Everything has been entrusted to me by my
Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the
Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
“Come to me, all you who labour and are over
burdened, and I will give you rest.
Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for your soul.
Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light.”
This is the Word of the Lord
Dialogue
What is a burden?
Start with physical burdens and
then go onto more mental and emotional ones.
Describe it with burdens from children everyday lives: exams anxieties, fears over being punished for
a misdeed, etc.
If we have a burden, what do we do? Get
others to help. Again, it is easy to
discuss where a physical burden is involved like getting many people to push a
broken down car. In more emotional
burdens, we have someone to talk to about it:
a teacher, parents, a close friend.
Emphasise
that this other person that you would call in to help, be it a physical burden
or not, would normally be someone stronger than you. For a physical burden, it would be someone
who is bigger and has more muscles. For
emotional burdens, it is normally someone who is older and more experienced
than us. Discuss the strongest person in
the world: Jesus. Discuss how he would
help us with our burdens.
For older
children, you may want to go into the kind of burdens that Jesus was trying to
relieve in his days. For instance, in
this passage, he probably meant the burden of the Jewish Law, which heavily
prescribes what is permissible and what is not permissible in daily lives. The rules on Sabbath did not allow people to
work and travel. Work is defined as
lifting a set weight and travel is defined by a set distance. Jesus did away with all that. Does this lesson still apply today? Discuss how laws can become burdensome if the
end reason is ignored. Discuss how
various people have challenged unreasonable or unjust laws like Jesus did.
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